Women, Advertising, & the Ottoman Empire

In this paper, I intend to look at the issues of advertising and women in the Ottoman Empire. I will identify how advertising forms had the ability of impacting women within in the Ottoman Empire as well as how the advertising forms had a general impact on Ottoman society as a whole. I will mainly focus on the nineteenth century and twentieth century in my analysis. However, I will make reference to the conditions that preceded the context of my analysis. First, I want to elaborate on the context from which I begin my enquiry. The Ottoman Empire didn’t feel the true forces of modernization until around the nineteenth century. Some have identified the date at which the Ottoman regime faced political, financial, and social challenges associated with modernization as the 1830s. As the regime began to feel the impacts of modernization, the Sultan felt the pressures from European powers. Soon the military and the bureaucratic apparatus begin to show signs of strain. Of course, the challenges associated with modernization ultimately reached the society as a whole. At this time, there was a flood of mass-produced goods. Many of these goods came from different trade agreements that had recently been signed with the European states. The influx of goods and increased trade diminished the traditional guild methods of production as well as consumption throughout the Empire. At the time, the urban areas in the Empire could have been described as cosmopolitan. The major cities were a combination of minority groups, Europeans, Levantines, and a wealthy bureaucratic class who were largely accepting of European ways of living and European ideals. I mention this context in order to show how modernization had begun to affect the region. I also want to highlight how the cities within the Ottoman Empire were becoming highly diversified. In other words, the Empire was undergoing major...